Lonesome Pine

One of the most famous assaults of the Gallipoli campaign took place over four bloody days in August 1915 across an area no bigger than a football field. On a small plateau in Gallipoli known as Lone Pine — named for the lonesome pine that stood there — this fierce battle was fought. In the late afternoon of 6 August 1915, the Australians orchestrated an attack aimed at breaking the Turkish stronghold on Lone Pine. The fighting on both sides during these attacks and counter-attacks involved throwing bombs over hastily erected barriers, mad dashes through the trenches, firing off a few shots at close range, hand-to-hand combat, tripping over the dead and avoiding the dying and wounded. Four days of intense fighting and close combat resulted in the loss of thousands of lives on both sides. In this short period of time, seven of Australia's nine Gallipoli VCs were earned — a powerful tribute to the courage and sacrifice of the soldiers involved. Simon Cameron's painstakingly researched account, Lonesome Pine, allows us to now gain a greater understanding of the sacrifice of so many in such a short period of time. This book describes the days leading up to the attack and the horror of the battle in gripping detail, as well as giving an insight into the lives of the men who fought, died in and survived the Battle of Lone Pine.

Simon Cameron graduated as a medical practitioner in 1981 from Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia with minors in history. Training in history stimulated a life of enquiry, culminating in a social history of Adelaide's monuments which was published in 1997. He discovered Australia's Great War history at Anzac Cove in the 1980s where the lonely, bone strewn gullies inspired pilgrimages to other battlefields. Trying to understand why our young nation was stepping onto the stage of ancient battles-capes was a journey enlivened by the stories of endurance, loss and despair in the literature and archives of that generation. There is no wisdom in war, but understanding what war means is the only wise thing to do, and telling the soldiers' stories is the only way to do it.